The Death of Corinne

19

The Birds

We didn’t meet them until some time later. (Antonia wrote in her diary.)

Maitre Maginot came down first. She was clad in a magenta gown that swept the floor and a silk turban with a brooch pinned to one side of it – only part of the brooch was visible, a bird of some kind, made of silver, from what I could see, the rest being hidden within folds of the turban. She also wore pendant ruby earrings and a ruby necklace and a curious red string bracelet on her left wrist. Her hands are veined, her nails long and varnished red, and she wore several large-stoned rings. She looks tall but, as I discovered, that is due to the high-heeled shoes she has on. Her appearance was striking and extremely theatrical. She might have been the high priestess of some esoteric cult.

There is something seriously wrong with her face, the result, as Jonson had told us, of a stroke. Her eyes give the impression of having been sewn into slits and consequently have a Chinese-looking slant, which gives her face the cast of an Oriental warrior. They lack mobility and she seems to find it difficult to blink. Her complexion is the colour of raw veal and she tries to improve it, rather unsuccessfully, by applying some very white powder. Her brows have been plucked and pencilled over. Her age is difficult to gauge. Mid-sixties, at a guess – maybe older. The cruel set of her mouth and jutting lip lend a ferocity and a distinctiveness to her expression. Her voice is unpleasant. She speaks with the venomous rasp of a predatory creature.

I felt a leaden oppression descend on me the moment I laid eyes on her. I seem to possess the kind of morbid sensitivity to emotional atmosphere which, according to Hugh, is common to lovers and housewives. Introductions having been made, Maitre Maginot hardly spoke to me, didn’t so much as glance at me, in fact. Hugh looked rather distinguished in his maroon smoking jacket and she fixed her eyes on him quizzically for a couple of moments.

It was the petrifying gaze of a Medusa, he said later. Unless she wanted a toy-boy for some unspeakable sexual practices and he fitted the bill. He expected her tastes to be shockingly kinky, he said, warming to the fantasy. Clearly, she was the dominatrix type.

Provost handed round pale sherry of exceptional quality. Maitre Maginot sat next to Jonson on the sofa and addressed herself to him, exclusively. She berated him for having failed to make sure the field would be clear for their arrival. She spoke in a loud enough voice for me to hear. She and Corinne were not having the privacy they had expected. Corinne was jumpy and tense. Corinne found it impossible to relax in the company of strangers. Maitre Maginot looked from me to Hugh, rather pointedly. (Did she really believe Jonson could have shooed us off the premises?)

She went on breathing toxic dragon-fumes at him. Had he checked the house from top to bottom? Every single room? The cellars and the attics? The pantry? The outbuildings? She seemed to doubt whether the search had been thorough. He had conducted a search the day before, but not today? Would he repeat that? Not today? She threw up her hands in dismay. But that was exceedingly remiss of him! What had he been doing with himself? Was that why she had employed his services? To lounge about? To kick his heels? She was so enraged that her turban shook. Suddenly – and rather bizarrely – she reminded me of the glove puppet Corinne had had as a child. The bossy governess – Miss Mountjoy.

A fresh search must be conducted tonight, she said, raising an admonishing forefinger. We shall do it together. We’ll check every part of the house and the outbuildings. We shall go over it with a – what was that ridiculous English phrase? – fine-tooth comb? Yes – after dinner. I saw Jonson nod agreement.

Lady Grylls – resplendent in a light green silk dress with trailing sleeves – was clearly determined not to be intimidated or made angry by Maitre Maginot. As the latter held forth, Lady Grylls assumed a mock-solemn expression by drawing the corners of her mouth downwards while rolling her eyes. She kept nodding with exaggerated portentousness. Once or twice, when she was sure Maginot was not looking, she gave us a wink.

It was getting late. Provost had come in twice to say that dinner was ready. Maitre Maginot turned to Lady Grylls – ‘Is that man reliable? Have you checked his credentials? Has he been with you long?’ To all three questions Lady Grylls answered placidly in the affirmative. ‘I think we should go ahead and eat now,’ Maitre Maginot said eventually. Corinne was probably on her knees, praying to the Holy Virgin. Corinne had been in a strange, fatalistic mood the last couple of days. Corinne’s nerves had been torn to shreds. Maitre Maginot blamed that crazy American woman’s letters with their wild assertions. And of course the death threats. Nonsense of course, nothing but empty threats, but so terribly unsettling for poor Corinne. (If she thinks they are empty threats, why does she make such great fuss over the security checks? A contradiction, surely?)

It was as we were sitting down to dinner that Corinne Coreille joined us.

No meeting ever matches up to one’s prevision of it. In my mind I had consigned her to a third world, one ruled by unreason, miracles and magic; I had imagined her to be as foreign as the sphinx, and now felt startled and disappointed at how normal she seemed. All right, she clearly wore tons of make-up and her glossy chestnut hair was most probably a wig, but apart from that there isn’t anything particularly extraordinary about her. She was clad in a high-collared dress of very light blue, with a red bow at the neck, and she had a red string bracelet on her left wrist, the same as Maitre Maginot. I smelled her scent – old-fashioned violets.

She doesn’t look fifty-five. That of course could only have been achieved through very recent and rather superior plastic surgery, conducted by the most skilful of Swiss surgeons. She might also have had shots of Botox. It’s the hands that betray one’s real age, but Corinne’s were smooth and unpigmented, without a single liver spot. I marvelled at that until I discovered that she was actually wearing flesh-coloured gloves, with the nails painted in. That was the only real oddity about her.

‘You remember Hugh of course?’ Lady Grylls boomed.

Corinne gave a sweet smile. ‘Oh yes, ’ she said. ‘I remember Hugh. The Royal Albert Hall, 1969. You had a little limp, yes? Result of playing “footer”? I hope your foot is better?’

‘Much better, thank you,’ Hugh answered, poker-faced. ‘I’ve had – um – sufficient time to recover.’

‘Thank you very much for the flowers,’ Corinne went on in her shy voice. ‘They were lovely… How is Amanda? Is she still fond of her dog Bernard?’

‘I am afraid Bernard died back in 1974, I think.’

‘Oh, I am extremely sorry!’ Corinne looked genuinely distressed.

Could she really be so peculiar, I wondered – or had she decided to put on the kind of performance that would confirm the popular perception of her as a person who was completely out of touch with reality?

There was a little commotion as we took our seats at the dinner table. Maitre Maginot refused to sit with her back to the door, so Aunt Nellie’s seating plan underwent a last-minute change. ‘We must be able to see who comes in. We all need to be extremely vigilant,’ Maitre Maginot said, looking round the table.

Dinner was superb. Mashed avocado with crisp bacon, prawn pancakes, and these were followed by roast grouse. We had champagne first, then red burgundy, then Sauternes (which I didn’t drink, but Hugh hailed as first-class’.) Lady Grylls was served first, before any of us, in the ancient feudal manner, the idea being that in the event of the food being poisoned, the hostess would gallantly succumb, and her instant death would be a warning to the rest of the table to abstain.

Maitre Maginot drank a fair amount of wine. Lady Grylls hadn’t stinted herself – she could be a wonderful hostess when she chose to. We were served by Provost and son Nicholas, both clad in black-and-yellow striped waistcoats and white gloves. Like the waiters at Maxim’s, Aunt Nellie said vaguely.

Conversation was rather strangled and uneasy, at least at the start. It was punctuated by unnerving silences. There are limits to the kind of small talk people can maintain in the face of mysterious adversity without appearing ridiculous. How could we have pretended that this was an ordinary social visit, when we all knew that it was anything but? Maitre Maginot maintained her air of disapproval. Jonson didn’t say much. He and Corinne had exchanged nods and smiles, but they didn’t communicate in any other way in the course of the evening.

‘It is cold here. I am particularly susceptible to colds,’ Maitre Maginot complained. ‘England is a cold country. I do not normally drink much but I need to keep myself warm. These English country houses, they are always the same. I started reading a book on the plane. A detective story, as it happens, set in an English country house. It was quite absurd, but I felt disturbed by it. I can’t say why. I left it on the plane. I never finished it. I’d forgotten how much I hate that sort of thing – but you must take my word for it that it was quite absurd.’ Maitre Maginot was becoming voluble, no doubt mellowed by the wine she was drinking. ‘The Hunt for – No, I can’t remember what it was called. Some unusual name. For some reason it gave me the creeps.’

‘Antonia writes detective stories,’ Lady Grylls said, but Maitre Maginot grimaced as though she had bitten into a lemon, shook her head vigorously and said that that was not a subject she wished to discuss.

‘What are these red bracelets you are wearing?’ Hugh asked.

‘The red string wards off the evil eye,’ Maitre Maginot explained. ‘We are both daughters of the Kabbalah. When somebody is as famous as Corinne, she needs protection. The red string only looks like red string but in actual fact it carries great powers with it.’

Pudding was served. Delicious creme brulee, and there was a second choice: frothy chocolate mousse. Corinne had two helpings of the latter, I noticed. Lady Grylls asked about Corinne’s Osaka concert last November. It was Maitre Maginot who gave us an account of it. (She seems to be taking her duties as Corinne’s spokesperson too literally.)

‘It was magnificent,’ she breathed. ‘Truly triumphant. Sublime. Corinne was in superb form.’ Warmed by the good wine, Maitre Maginot was slipping into the known Parisian tendency of linguistic inflation. Her French accent had become more pronounced. ‘There were six encores.’

There had been a pin-drop hush to start with. Every member of the audience had held their heads bowed low, in anticipation. They might have been participating in some act of religious observance. They were strange individuals, the Japanese. The moment Corinne appeared on the stage, they went wild. They screamed so much, they had to be cautioned – some of them had to be physically restrained, otherwise they would have joined Corinne on stage!

The wine sparkled blood-red as Maitre Maginot held her glass to the light. The concert hall had teemed with security guards and secret police. There had been a number of policewomen dressed as geishas who had carried stun guns hidden within the folds of their kimonos. Several doctors and nurses from the American hospital, warned of the possibility of incidents, had also been present.

The applause that met each of Corinne’s songs had been deafening. At the end, the audience had overcome the ushers and the guards and surged towards the stage. Corinne had found herself under a shower of lotus blossoms, rose petals and star-shaped confetti. The cries had been indescribable, the f(nslt of the cameras blinding. Men as well as women wept and they beat at their faces with their fists. ‘For a moment it looked as though things were getting out of hand,’ Maitre Maginot said. ‘Then we heard a sharp crack – someone had let off a gun!’

Maitre Maginot had no idea whether it had been a real gun – probably not. It was the last of the encores – an extremely popular Japanese song, which could be roughly translated as ‘I Am Nothing Without You’ – that had provoked the furore. For that particular song Corinne had changed into the nun-like nurse’s uniform of the Dames of Malta.

‘I do not exaggerate. I rarely exaggerate. Never before in my life have I observed such a spectacle.’ Maitre Maginot shook her head. ‘Men in a state of exaltation, banging their foreheads before Corinne. Blood streamed down their faces but they didn’t seem to care. They looked radiant. It was as though they had been – how do you say? – vouchsafed a glimpse of the godhead.’

One extremely fat Japanese man, wearing a smart light-brown suit and a yellow waistcoat, his hair en brosse, had managed to climb on to the stage and he got hold of Corinne’s ankle. ‘He looked extremely prosperous,’ Maitre Maginot said. The man had attempted to take off one of Corinne’s golden slippers – as a souvenir, no doubt – or maybe he was one of those disgusting perverts, Maitre Maginot was not sure. ‘He wouldn’t let go and had to be forcibly dragged away! He bit one of the policemen and kicked another, so they used a stun gun on him. When he collapsed, it took ten people to carry him out of the hall! That made me laugh, I must confess, though of course the whole episode was rather grotesque.’

‘I was very frightened,’ Corinne whispered.

‘I know you were. Ma pauvre petite. You trembled like a little bird.’ Maitre Maginot reached out for her hand. The way Corinne reacted to MM’s touch made me think she was afraid of her. A certain tensing of the shoulders.

‘The Japanese were very good to me,’ Corinne went on. ‘They produced a CD to coincide with the concert.’

‘Ah, the new CD.’ Tilting her head to one side in an oddly bird-like manner, Maitre Maginot regarded Corinne with the kind of pride that could only be described as motherly. ‘Perhaps we could listen to it now, yes?’

At a sign from Lady Grylls, Provost inserted the CD and turned on the player.

J‘ai vu son visage tout au long de ma vie

Comme si je n’avais connu que lui -

It was a song that started as melancholy and became progressively intense and dramatic.

Va decrocher tes lunes

Batir tes cathedrales

Dans les matins sans brume

Mais ne me fais plus mal…

When the song was over, Maitre Maginot asked for the player to be turned off. She said, ‘Corinne, ma chere, would you sing that last bit for us again?’ And Corinne smiled – and did. Although the song wasn’t my cup of tea, I have to admit that her voice is as beautiful and powerful as it is fresh. Any suspicions that Corinne might have mimed to playback at her Japanese concert were dispelled in an instant. That, I believe, was Maitre Maginot’s secret intention – to show us, in case we harboured any doubts.

We were having coffee in the drawing room when Provost came in to say that someone had rung, a Miss Tricia Swindon, an American lady. She wanted to speak to Miss Coreille. Corinne didn’t stir. Maitre Maginot rose to her feet. ‘I’ll speak to her. I have no idea who she is. It might be the other one, the crazy American woman, don’t you think?’ Her eyes flashed angrily at Jonson. ‘However did she manage to get this number?’

As Maitre Maginot left the room, I noticed something very strange. Corinne tilted her head to one side, in a movement that was an exact replica of the one made by la Maginot.

When Maitre Maginot returned, she said, ‘It was most peculiar. The woman rang off the moment she heard my voice. Didn’t say a word, apart from asking if I was Corinne Coreille. Have you had any other such similar calls?’

She cast an inquiring glance at Jonson, who – after a moment’s hesitation – told her about the anonymous calls. ‘But this is terrible!’ Maitre Maginot cried. ‘It must be that crazy American woman. I am afraid we’ll have to inform the police first thing tomorrow morning. We have no option. I am sorry, ma petite.’ She looked towards Corinne who hadn’t stirred but continued sitting passively, blank-faced. ‘For the time being we rely on you to protect us, Mr Jonson. I am sure you will do your best to justify your fee.’

I saw Lady Grylls pushing up her glasses and squinting at Maitre Maginot’s turban, at the place where it had been fastened by the silver bird brooch. The turban folds having got a bit loose, more of the brooch was revealed now. I could see that it was in fact not one but two birds standing back to back, linked by their tails, Siamese-twins fashion.

Two ostriches.

I believe I experienced something of a shock when I realized where I’d seen that very same brooch before. It would be too much of a coincidence if there existed two such brooches.

It was Ruse, Corinne’s mother, who wore the brooch in one of the photographs pasted in Aunt Nellie’s scrapbook.